Auth is historically one of the hardest things to get right in a web app, and historically it’s where beginners burn the most time and get into the most trouble. The good news: the Build New template handles all of it for you.
In this lesson we’ll take a quick tour of the history of Rails auth (Devise, then the Rails 8 built-in generator), explain what we’ve extended on top of the generator to give you a complete account experience, and then walk through the entire signup, login, and profile flow in the running app — plus a look at where the auth code actually lives in the codebase.
- A brief history of auth in Rails — from roll-your-own to Devise to the Rails 8 generator
- What the template adds on top: Inertia-rendered pages, profile management, timezone capture
- The full signup, login, logout, and profile flow demonstrated in the running app
- Where the User model, controllers, and authentication helpers live in the codebase